Kevin Walz

USA

Lighting design seems to spark the imagination, eliciting the most inventive, intriguing and poetic forms. Take, for example, Baldinger's Four Arc lamp by Kevin Walz, a cluster of translucent diffusion panels that resemble the head of a graceful flower set atop a slender stem. Kevin Walz, an American designer who now resides in Rome, studied fine arts at Pratt Institute and New York Studio School. He never studied design. His first paid design job was for Italian fashion designer Adri. It captured the spirit of the moment and was published in over 30 magazines around the world. Today, Walz has successfully completed projects in architecture, interior design, product design, graphics, packaging, advertising and sets for film. His work can be characterized as innovative, accessible and practical. Walz himself can be described as a maverick, a designer who questions accepted ideas and solutions.

Interiors magazine called Walz one of New York's "most creative and artistic interior designers," while Interior Design noted his "sense of finesse, the delightful surprise of common materials taken to uncommon heights..." Walz himself has said, "Much of my work is forward thinking; other times, it is responsive to the past. I like the process of working within the vocabularies of time periods, within the sensibility of cultures, with ideas from other visual disciplines. Innovation is not defined by clever form.that is called showmanship. Invention can be presented in ways that are understandable yet fresh to the eye."

Walz' client list includes the American Academy in Rome, the Dana Delany Residence, and the Richard and Carole Rifkind residence. He has product licenses with Arc International, Baldinger Architectural Lighting, Design Tex, KorQinc, Tufenkian Tibetan Carpets and Jado. In 1994, Walz was inducted into the Interior design Hall of Fame. He was also named to the Metropolitan Home Design 100 Hall of Fame in 1997. In that same year, his work was featured in an exhibition entitled "Kevin Walz: Art" at the American Academy in Rome.

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